The modern portrait is what moves me most
Aphorism
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Neurofolio © 2026
I am a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter. In just over a decade I made about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings: landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits in bold colour and expressive brushwork.
Painting from feeling as truth
4 milestones
Artistic credo in letters: paint things as you feel them; later cited by Bacon as influential.
Self-taught development across the Netherlands, Antwerp and Paris; main work in Arles, Saint-Rémy, Auvers.
While working at Saint-Rémy, paintings exhibited in Brussels and Paris; critics hailed me a genius.
Spring 1888 in Arles: Mediterranean light and blossoming orchards significantly brightened my colours.
After Charles Blanc's treatise I came to believe colour goes beyond description and carries feeling, and I built my art on it: garish reds and greens for The Night Café, yellow for emotional truth.